The photo policy: what a portrait here promises, and what it never shows

The women on these files are not here instead of a life; they are here alongside one. There is a profession behind most of them, in one case a degree still being read for, and behind all of them a family, a landlord, a circle of friends and colleagues who have no idea and no need to. Anonymity is therefore not a stylistic gesture and not a tease. It is the single condition on which each of them consented to appear at all, and the house regards it as the first term of its own agreement with her.

The veil accordingly conceals identity and nothing else. Her height, her build, her hair and its colour, her carriage and her dress are all left as the camera found them, which is what makes the comparison below meaningful. The face itself is the one thing reserved for the evening.

An evening dress, an interior, a window, a street at dusk. The portraits show how a companion looks and carries herself on an evening out, and nothing is posed to suggest more than company. No image is published without her agreement, and every one appears on the introductions exactly as she approved it.

Before a file opens, Octavia meets the companion and holds each image beside her: face, height, hair and build. Anything that no longer matches, a colour grown out or a length cut short, is set aside. The age, height and languages on her file come from that meeting and from her identification, never from a questionnaire. About the house explains how that first meeting comes about.

Appearances change, so the check is repeated whenever a companion alters her look noticeably. A set that has drifted is withdrawn until new portraits replace it, however flattering the old ones were. A file is never padded with stale images for the sake of a fuller page.

Nudity, and posing that suggests it. Pictures from a stock library or from another woman’s portfolio. Faces or figures produced or altered by software. Any portrait kept on a file after it has stopped resembling her.

A portrait may be looked at on this site and nowhere else. It may not be copied, kept, forwarded, published on any other page or service, cropped to isolate a veiled face, or submitted to a reverse image search or any facial recognition tool. Every one of those attempts to reverse the single protection the house undertook to give her, and the house will act on it.

The same obligation applies in person. Attempting to establish a companion’s identity, pressing her for a real name, or directing a camera or a recorder at her concludes the engagement immediately under the conduct clause of the terms, with the fee retained and no discussion entertained.

A companion may ask for a single portrait, or her whole file, to come down whenever she chooses, and she owes nobody a reason; the request is carried out promptly. How the site treats your own details is set out separately in the privacy notice.